BJP way ahead of others in political ad spending on Meta; proxy pages spent more than official ones – Alt News

With the 2024 Lok Sabha elections barely a few weeks away, political campaigns have reached a fever pitch both on the ground and virtually. With India ranking very high on the list of countries with the largest number of Internet users in the world, parties have recognized the power of social media and are investing significant sums into their digital campaigns. Consequently, social media advertisements have come up as a crucial means for parties to communicate with the electorate.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and others provide advertisers with enough information to run targeted advertisements reaching millions of voters. These targeted advertisements are based on factors such as location, demographics, interests, language, and behaviour, to achieve maximum impact.

Methodology

Alt News filtered data from the top 100 pages that spent the most on political advertisements in the last 90 days, as published by the Meta Ad Library on March 19 of this year. Advertisements run by leaders in their personal capacity were excluded from this data. Rahul Gandhi’s page is included in this data because the disclaimer in the advertisements run by him mentions the name of the Congress party.

Political advertisements on Facebook pages are of two types: official party pages, which share posts and propaganda according to party lines, and other pages that support a particular party through all posts and advertisements but do not have any official affiliation with the party. The expenditures on advertisements by these pages are not accounted for by the Election Commission. We have categorized such pages as proxy pages.

Analysis of this data revealed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has spent the most on political advertisements, but the expenditure on advertisements by BJP’s proxy pages exceeded that on their official advertisements.

Party and Government Advertisement Expenditure

BJP (including official and proxy pages)

The Bharatiya Janata Party has spent Rs. 74,407,939 on 10,884 advertisements through official pages and Rs. 84,175,893 through proxy pages.

Congress:

The Congress party has spent Rs. 4,298,268 on 614 advertisements.

TMC:

The Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, has spent Rs. 6,373,293 on 423 advertisements.

YSRCP:

The Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party led by Andhra Pradesh chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy has spent Rs. 16,999,080 on 566 advertisements.

Government Advertisements:

During these 90 days, the central government and various state governments collectively spent Rs. 46,140,328 on 1,223 advertisements.

Proxy Pages:

Apart from official pages of political parties, a whole bunch of controversial proxy and meme pages have emerged as key players as far as running divisive advertisements is concerned. These pages not only target opposition parties but often amplify contentious narratives. By concealing their true identities, they work on behalf of political parties and publish ads that cannot be run through official channels. These advertisements often use humour, satire, and sarcasm to mock opposition parties and their leaders, and frequently allude to communal angles.

Several pages in this list attack the Opposition and bolster the BJP’s propaganda, with higher expenditures on advertisements compared to BJP’s official pages. Alt News had previously exposed some of these pages in an investigation in April 2023, revealing their direct connections with the BJP.

Sensitive Advertisements:

Some advertisements run by these pages are so inflammatory and sensitive that political parties refrain from posting them on their official pages. Advertisements run through proxy pages often touch upon divisive issues and exploit prejudices. Alt News reported last month about a political advertisement depicting live murder, which had been viewed more than 30 million times. Upon informing Meta, they acknowledged the violation of their standards and took action against it.

Several advertisements have displayed violence and targeted political adversaries. Examples of some such advertisements are provided below. Meta took action against many of these advertisements later, although by then they had already garnered lakhs of views collectively.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Pages with similar disclaimers:

Here we have listed pages with identical disclaimers. The disclaimer on all of these pages reads “Ulta Chashmaa.” Upon checking the details of these disclaimers, it is evident that these pages, which target the Opposition and propagate BJP’s agenda, are operated by the same admin. All these pages are included in the list of BJP’s proxy pages. One such page is ‘सीधा चश्मा’ (Straight Glasses), which was created on March 5 and has spent over Rs. 15 Lakh on advertisements so far.

The disclaimer of this page also contains details associated with ‘उल्टा चश्मा’ (Ulta Chashma), meaning this page is also a part of BJP’s proxy pages. One page, ‘Sonar Bangla – সোনার বাংলা,’ has now been deleted. Between March 5 and 7, this page spent Rs. 3,27,000 running nine advertisements on Facebook and Instagram. However, it is noteworthy that when the data of this page is searched in the Meta Ad Library according to date range, only four advertisements are shown. However, upon further inspection, it is revealed that nine advertisements were indeed run by this page. This raises questions about the data released by Meta.

Political parties are spending large sums on online advertisements, including via proxy pages. This also raises the question of whether parties maintain accounts for advertisements run through proxy pages. This expenditure raises questions about electoral transparency. As the general elections in India draw closer, all parties are increasingly focusing on digital advertisements, with the role of proxy pages also gaining prominence. The lack of transparency and accountability regarding expenditure and content of political advertisements on social media will continue to be a subject of scrutiny in the near future.

Related